NCAR/RAP NEXRAD Data Archives

This page is a tribute to Peter Neilley's (UCAR's) NCAR/RAP NEXRAD Data Archives Viewer.

This page offered a wonderful Javascript animator which could show local or regional archives of radar data from the last month (the only long-term local radar archive). It disappeared on April 22, 2004 and the data was folded into UCAR's general weather page. The archive was taken down from 30 days to 2 days*.

UPDATE 6/1/04: I realized today that the original Javascript and radar images ARE still in use elsewhere at UCAR, in their case studies webpage but are only archived based on severity of storms.

UPDATE 5/15/04: *The archive has been stretched to 5 days only. I have run out of space on the WeatherMatrix server temporarily so there is not much we can do with on that. I also found out that the solution for getting his Java animations to work is that you must download and install the newest version of Java (click on DOWNLOAD THE JRE then DOWNLOAD JS2E JRE) and you must follow SSEC's directions for memory issues, if applicable on your Operating System. I am still investigating using a Javascript solution to animate his images -- this would be much faster and would load instantaneously given sufficient bandwidth, rather than taking several minutes to load as ths SSEC java applet does.

UPDATE 4/24/04: I talked with Greg Thompson, who is responsible for UCAR's weather section, after the page disappeared. He has put up some replacements, and actually the imagery is not bad, but the animation is Java and won't work in any browser that I've tried. I offered extra disk space if he needed it and if he is unable to provide a longer archive, he may take us up on that. I also noted that WeatherMatrix is interested in archiving his radars for posterity, if he can give us a way to do so (right now the new site can't show directory listings so there is no way to save the images off). I am going to continue to work with him to restore some of the previously available functionality.

-Jesse Ferrell, Founder, WeatherMatrix

• What the Original NIDS Archive Page looked like
• What the Original Local Radar & Javascript animator looked like
  • What the Original Javascript code looked like
  • Alternate Code Saved From Case Studies Temporary Page
• UCAR's Replacement Page
• Other NEXRAD Data Providers